Patrick McLean, whom I first encountered as the author of the podcast ‘The Seanachai,’ has an excellent approach to information delivery. I’m going to make an assumption here and say that it’s probably a result of his years in advertising, which means trying to deliver information and emotion in a confined space where nobody really wants to listen to you anyway.

For a person or company to market effectively value must be provided in every interaction. This value is provided by good content. When I talk about this subject I get a lot of smiles and head nods. But very few people implement.
– Patrick E. McLean

In any event, if you are interested in writing — whether it be fiction, copywriting, or letters to your maiden aunt — I wholeheartedly recommend that you read this e-book. Then you’ll be able to note just how many unnecessary adverbs I’ve used in this post … I assure you, I’ve been paying much better attention since perusing Patrick’s book.

Something that annoys me is the growing use of adjectives where adverbs ought to be used; this seems to be a particularly US-English phenomenon, as in the former Apple Computer tag line “think different” (think differentLY!, please). (And yes, I’m otherwise an Apple Mac fan.

It seems to me that there is a bit of a backlash from the overuse of adverbs resulting in an under-use. It’s been so drilled into people that adverbs are bad, they’re having trouble reconciling to using them in the appropriate places.

It reminds me of the horror some people feel when you end a sentence with a preposition.

Heidi

Verbivore said:

Jun. 6, 2010

[quote]It reminds me of the horror some people feel when you end a sentence with a preposition.[/quote]
Ah yes, that old chestnut. It was a “rule” that a master of the English language, Winston Churchill (recommended reading!), would not put up with.

“[...] up with which I will not put!” was his reply to some editorial interference on the matter of a terminal preposition.